Author: Elizabeth Scott

Scott, Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Thomas Scott, Independent Minister at Norwich, and sister of Thomas Scott, noted below, was born at Norwich about 1708. In 1751 she was married to Elisha Williams, who had been from 1726 to 1739 Rector of Yale College, U.S.A., and with him she proceeded to Connecticut. On the death of Mr. Williams she was married to the Hon. William Smith, of New York, who also predeceased her. She died at Wethersfield, Connecticut, June 13th, 1776. In connection with Miss Scott's hymns we are acquainted directly and indirectly with four manuscripts, each of which is interesting in itself. These are as follows:—
i. The first manuscript is in the library of Yale College, New Haven, Connecticut. Mr. Franklin Bowditch… Go to person page >

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Awake, our drowsy souls. Elizabeth Scott. [Sunday.] First published in the Baptist Collection of Ash and Evans, Bristol, 1769, No. 307, in 5 stanzas of 6 lines, and appointed as “A hymn for Lord's Day Morning." From that collection it passed into several later hymnals, including Rippon, Dobell, and others; but it is almost entirely unknown to modern hymnbooks except in America having been superseded by "Awake, ye saints, awake, And hail," &c, a recast of the same in 4 stanzas (stanza iii. being the original with "and " for "while," line 3) made by T. Cotterill, and given in the first ed. of his Selection, 1810. This form of the hymn is in somewhat extensive use both in Great Britain and America, and is usually ascribed correctly to "Elizabeth Scott and Thomas Cotterill." In many of the modern American hymnals, stanza iv. is omitted; but the English generally give the text from Cotterill as in Baptist Psalms and Hymns, 1858, in this case the only alteration is "blest" for "bless'd" in stanza i., 1. 5. Another form of the hymn is:— "Servants of God, awake." It consists of stanzas i.—iii. of Cotterill's recast, slightly altered. It appeared in the Harrow School Hymn Book, 1855, and from thence passed into Church Hymns , 1871, No. 39. In the Hymn Book of the Evangelical Assoc., Cleveland, Ohio, 1881, No. 604, stanzas i., ii. are given as "Children of God, awake"; and in the Marlborough College Hymns, 1869, stanzas i.—iii. as "Come, sons of God, awake." [Willliam T. Brooke]
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)